If you’ve heard an undercurrent of whining every time you step outdoors, that may have been my muttering carried on a brisk north wind to your ears. I am a believer in getting outdoors every day, but this year the cold seems extra bitter. I used to be more tough. I was born and raised so far north in Minnesota that you could see Canada from my parents’ dock.
So in a strange coincidence, in my urge to be indoors rather than outdoors due to the cold, I have also been spending more time with the freezer portion of my refrigerator. I’ve been driven there by some over-ambitious purchasing at an end-of-season farmer’s market as well as some serious aspirations to improve my diet.
I buy a lot of fruits and vegetables and plan to eat them. Do I eat them? Mostly, but not always in a timely way. I am proud to say I am much more strategic and methodical when it comes to blueberries.
Bragging about blueberry handling
In mid-to-late July, I make several visits to Pine Winder Blueberries, a terrific pick-your-own farm just north of Pine River. For each visit, I allow myself one treat–e.g. muffins, pie, or bars, and then freeze the rest by pouring them out carefully on cookie sheets and putting them in the freezer for 2 hours. Then, once frozen, I repackage them in gallon size freezer bags. My goal is to fill 9 bags with berries to have one per month, October to June. Those fresh-frozen berries are like money in the bank!
So I know in another month I will also be glad I cut up some of the beautiful peppers I bought at an early November farmer’s market and put them in small freezer bags. Now about cooking that squash before freezing…
What can you freeze and how
According to this cheat sheet from One5C, freezing produce that’s about to expire stops metabolic activity. But it’s not like you want to open your freezer and stick in the fruit bowl (for one thing, your freezer may be too crowded for that–more on that below). For optimum taste and texture, both of which will likely be at least somewhat diminished by freezing, you may need to cook, puree, or juice some ahead of time. For those you can freeze raw, some may need to be cut up first.
Here is their breakdown of how to handle some popular fruits and vegetables.
Apples - cooked
Asparagus - cooked
Avocado - raw, cut
Banana - raw, cut
Berries - raw, whole
Brussels sprouts - cooked
Cabbage - cooked
Carrots (and parsnips and turnips) - cooked
Celery - raw, cut
Cherries - raw, whole
Corn - raw, cut
Garlic - raw, cut
Grapes - raw, whole
Green beans - cooked
Kale - cooked
Mango - raw, cut
Melon - raw, cut
Onions - raw, cut
Pears - cooked
Peas - cooked
Peppers - raw, cut
Potato - cooked
Pumpkin - cooked
Radish - cooked
Scallions- raw, cut
Spinach (and arugula) - cooked
Stone fruit - raw, cut
Sweet potato - cooked
Tomatoes - pureed or juices (or cooked into sauce!)
Zucchini (and squash and eggplant) - cooked
Full freezer?
If your freezer is already crammed full of things, here are a few immediate use ideas:
-use veggies in a soup or frittata
-use fruit in a quick bread or cook down into a syrup or jam
-use fruit or veg in a smoothie
Here are some stats to help you know you are doing even MORE good by finding ways to preserve or use all the produce you’ve got.
According to ReFED, a nonprofit focused on reducing waste via changes in the food system, uneaten food consumes 21% of all fresh water use, 16% of all U.S. cropland use and results in 24% of landfill inputs and even 5.2% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
After you’ve spent your money and energy bringing produce home, it is unsurprisingly hard to see it go to waste. So putting in a little more time to be able to use it now or at a future date might be a great investment.
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